This paper presents an argument against the claim made by Mester and Ito (1989) and Lombardi (1991, 1995) that feature [voiced] is privative. Based on an analysis of the appearance of ／p／ in words such as assumption and redemption, I argue that the feature is binary. That is, [－voiced] should be present and active in the lexical phonology of English. I also show that, in addition to the emergence of the voiceless bilabial stop, the leftward spreading of a Laryngeal Node dominating [-voiced] causes devoicing of both ／b／ and ／v／ as well as despirantization in words like description and reception. I also argue that devoicing of the plural suffix after a voiceless obstruent is due to a spreading of a Laryngeal Node dominating [-voiced]. It is not due to a constraint which requires a tautosyllablic sequence of obstruents have the same value of the [voiced] feature.